“How can you say that — I worry not only about Hui-seo but about you too, Grandfather. Anseo is too far to visit often and look in on you. I can’t be at ease, so please reconsider.”
Hui-won, even as he persuaded their grandfather, sent Hui-seo a meaningful look.
As if to say, let’s persuade Grandfather together — but it was a hopeless notion. Even the plea of Hui-won, whom he doted on, didn’t get through; what reason was there for him to heed his words?
Hui-seo pretended not to see the tussle and idly fiddled with his prayer beads for no reason.
***
Since Grandfather held to silence, no conclusion was reached.
Hui-won withdrew, not seeming to think he could sway Grandfather alone — but he didn’t look as if he were giving up either.
Since Hui-seo had risen from his sickbed, they had begun to share tea together from time to time, and the proof was that he never missed the chance to slip in a word each time.
Hui-seo had his own many thoughts.
At first he was simply glad at the thought of being by his brother’s side. Enough to wish Hui-won’s persistence would break Grandfather’s stubbornness.
But once the joy settled, other thoughts took its place.
Her brother’s wedding, for instance.
Once he married the Minister of Personnel’s daughter, his brother would form a household of his own. Someday he would see his wife and children… and then, would there truly be a place for him there?
Within the boundaries Hui-won had drawn, the center had always been Hui-seo.
There was no exception.
Just as Hui-seo had always felt sorry, as if he had lost his parents to his brother, so his brother, pitying and cherishing the younger sibling who had lost both parents the moment he was born, knew no bounds in treasuring him.
Raising young Hui-seo — that, they said, had been his brother’s whole path until now.
But once a household is formed, the center naturally tilts that way.
Could he bear the ache born of no longer being Hui-won’s center?
Her brother’s tender affection — there could be no other like it.
If someone heard this worry, they’d say — hadn’t he a household of his own? Well…
Who could treasure him so devotedly?
At first he had simply rejoiced at the news of his brother’s wedding, fluttering with curiosity about who his sister-in-law would be — but as time passed, his heart grew barren.
The meager atmosphere of the household, and Hui-won’s absence — grown hard to see now that the wedding was near and everyone was busy coming and going — fanned the embers of that feeling.
It could only be a truly selfish, ugly heart.
Even as he fretted, afraid someone might glimpse these inner thoughts, time flowed swiftly, and before he knew it, the wedding day had come.
“They say the bride is truly lovely, don’t you think?”
Su-a, who had been watching the wedding behind Hui-seo, kept calling “young master, young master” and whispered.
She had been wondering all along what kind of person the bride would be, and now the explanation had attached itself.
“Indeed.”
Though the bride’s rouged face was hidden by broad sleeves and could not be seen, Hui-seo readily agreed with Su-a’s fuss. But his gaze was fixed not on the couple but on Hui-won.
“…My sister-in-law must be very lovely.”
Her brother was radiant in his bright clothes. Gazing at him, glittering, Hui-seo could not master the feeling that kept rising.
“I overheard a little earlier — His Majesty cherishes our young master a great deal, it seems.”
After clinging behind him for a bit, when had she diligently picked up others’ words?
“Is that so?”
Her girlish heart, once veiled, seemed to settle at the child’s words, and Hui-seo answered the young one.
Emboldened by the eager response, Su-a began busily laying out what she was sure was true.
“If the young master had been a prince, they would have married him long ago to the still-unwed Princess Hyeongnyeo…”
“Su-a.”
Hui-seo stopped her before Su-a’s words could finish.
It was only repeating what she’d heard, and amid the clamor no one around could hear their talk — but one never knew.
Besides, this was not Hui-won’s house but the Minister of Personnel’s residence. Better to swallow words that might cause trouble.
She worried lest it look like complaint and Hui-won be coldly regarded.
“Yes.”
At Hui-seo’s firm manner, Su-a promptly sealed her lips. Instead she watched the wedding rites with bright eyes, her cheeks round, plainly wanting to see from the front.
How could her inner thoughts be so easy to read — her heart must be cleaner and purer than spring water.
Smiling lightly, Hui-seo pushed the child’s back.
“Young master?”
He tilted his head at Su-a, who looked up with a puzzled air.
Su-a, who had looked as if she would demur, soon slunk forward.
“…Stay right here, all right?”
The front, like sacred untouchable ground — where he could not sit.
She had been like this ever since the day Hui-seo took the young child out to the marketplace.
In any case, perhaps because the chatterbox had gone, though the surroundings were still noisy, he himself grew quiet. And with it, his settled heart floated up again.
Hui-seo’s gaze turned to Hui-won.
Dressed in wedding robes, smiling as if painted, he looked the very picture of propriety.
Not out of favoritism, but Hui-won was certainly a talent the Son of Heaven would covet.
But only those permitted, as meritorious subjects of the founding, to inherit the rank of marquis (諸侯公) generation after generation — only the Eight Great Clans (世族八家) — could marry into the imperial family. It was a very old written law engraved in the Grand Yeon Code.
The Woo family, by contrast, was a house long since declined, unable to reach even the tail end of that most honored procession.
No — it was out of the question.
In truth, had the Son of Heaven not arranged the marriage, then even if Hui-won had made his own way, becoming the Minister of Revenue’s son-in-law would have been nearly impossible.
“……….”
Before he knew it, it was time for the shared-cup rite.
Hui-seo was watching with mouth properly closed when he felt a gaze rippling toward him, as if peeking.
It was closer to curiosity than hostility, and somehow familiar. He had met it before, when he greeted the Minister of Personnel alongside Grandfather.
‘Is it because I’m a provincial graduate? Our features are different from theirs. Look closely and they’re clearly different, but at a glance you can’t tell them apart.’
As a provincial graduate, he was long accustomed to being stared at by those who recognized him — it had been happening since he was young.
Rather, it was less than when he was young.
Hui-won, year by year, grew more sharply handsome and distinguished, while Hui-seo, for all the passing years, still had fine, delicate features.
That frailty, so unlike his brother, was one of Hui-seo’s long-standing grievances.
Hui-won said that once he reached his age he would fill out too, but — well, he was rather skeptical. Unlike Hui-won, who had never caught a cold, Hui-seo was prone to taking to his sickbed whenever the seasons changed.
Still the same, as ever.
Should he take up the martial arts again? He examined his own frame for no reason, trying to pretend not to notice the eyes upon him, but it was not easy.
He wanted to get away.
Especially when he heard it said that, with his brother so gifted, the younger ought rightly to be the same — then more than ever.
“…………”
At length, Hui-won drained the nuptial cup.
He was a married man now. Seeing his brother smile at his bride filled him with joy, but at the same time it felt as though the end of his own childhood had been announced, and a quiet sorrow crept in.
Hui-seo slipped out, mingling with those moving to their next places.
It was, in truth, the retreating back of one fleeing.
He had walked blindly, thinking only of escape, and after passing through two middle gates he found himself on an unfamiliar path. Only then did Su-a’s words come back to him — her earnest, repeated plea that he stay close. His grandfather’s face as well.
He had to turn back, even now.
He looked this way and that, but everyone was either watching the wedding or busy with preparations for the feast to follow — not a soul in sight.
Surely he hadn’t lost his way and wandered deep into the hills?
And this wasn’t even Hui-won’s own residence — it was the bride’s family estate.
If his grandfather were to find out—
…The mere thought left him bleak.
He strained to retrace his steps, but only unfamiliar paths kept appearing. By the time he reached the rear garden, he had given up on finding his way.
He’d been certain he’d walked toward where the guests were…
He knew he had a poor sense of direction, but the realization struck him afresh, and a sigh escaped him.
Swallowing the sigh, he gently rubbed his arms.
Among the crowd, the warmth and clamor had kept him from noticing, but the spring chill of the early spring day was quite biting.
If Su-a hadn’t nagged him into layering up, he’d have taken to his sickbed with another cold.
Hui-seo looked around for a gardener tending the rear garden, but there was nothing but flowering trees just putting out buds and curious young herbs.
“…………”
As he stood there, inwardly disappointed and deliberating which way to turn, he heard behind him a rustle — the sound of grass being trod.
For all his searching for another’s presence, at the presence felt at his back his body stiffened with tension before he knew it.
“Every time I see you, you seem to be in some difficulty.”
A voice low and cool, yet wrapped in an ambiguous tenderness.
Hui-seo gradually loosened his body, which had gone rigid with tension.
He knew this voice well.
And the bittersweet scent brushing the tip of his nose.
He had turned it over and over in his mind… and for that very reason, he could never forget it.
“…My lord?”
It was the man who had vanished without a trace beneath the moonlight.
“…………”
At the sight of him, he remembered the bloodstain left on the ground and the sight of him nonchalantly flicking his sword clean. And with it, the warmth of the arms that had drawn him in, and the back that had seemed too solid ever to crumble.
That was why he took a step toward him.
“How come you’re here….”
It was only once his startled heart had settled somewhat that the question burst out.
But the question died before it could tie itself into a knot.
“Ah — forgive me, I’ve asked something improper. You must have come to see my brother’s wedding as well, my lord.”
Whether he was kin of the Minister of Revenue or not, he must have come for today’s wedding — and hadn’t he seemed to know his brother? It was, in truth, a question not even worth asking.
“Isn’t that right?”
Hui-seo took another step closer.
The day they’d first met, he’d been too distracted every which way — he’d thought the man had only seemed larger than he was.
But standing beneath the bright sky, he could tell it had been no mistake.
“…………”
He was perhaps half a hand-span taller than himself.
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